Tolerance?

I recently came across an insightful poem by Alexander Pope that made me think of our world today and its gradual acceptance of all sorts of sins under the guise of tolerance:

Sin is of such a dreadful mien
That to be hated is but to be seen
But oft seen becomes a familiar face
At first tolerated and then embraced

These lines pack a solid punch as they point out how quickly sin can worm its way into our lives when we refuse to take a stand against it as soon as it reveals its ugly face. A clear case in point is abortion which has been embraced to the degree that it is legal in many parts of the world.  Legalized abortion has led to a culture of death in our country (and others) because evil snowballs once it's accepted and gathers up speed. It's a short jump from destroying life in the womb to destroying life outside of it.

Most of us have been raised in this culture of death where abortion, partial-birth abortion, and even euthanasia are accepted or even embraced as part of an "enlightened humanity" which equates "choice" with freedom and an individual's personal rights. These very things that are accepted as an individual's personal "rights" would have been considered their personal "wrongs" until the second half of the last century. They called those personal "wrongs" sin back then.

It's frightening how quickly sin snowballs and picks up speed in its downward roll when it doesn't meet enough resistance to stop it in its tracks.